http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/tags/censorship Giveaway of the Day Forums » Tag: censorship - Recent Posts en-US Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:34:42 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97642 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:28:21 +0000 graylox 97642@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Well I think everything is said now. </p> <p>You&#39;ll find such games for every flavour on the flash game sites.<br /> Nobody is able to prohibit that.<br /> We all know that there are far worse things to find in the internet and - what scares me far more - in real life.<br /> My concerns ref. to the fact that a serious website like GGOTD promotes such junk.<br /> Well, I understand they have a deal with the developer and can&#39;t just stop that.<br /> From my point of view it was a mistake to offer this game here; however, what counts one mistake when we got lots of fun games over the year.</p> <p>Let&#39;s go on, and let&#39;s try to make real life a little bit better instead.</p> <p>graylox </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97631 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:08:21 +0000 ⓒⓗⓘⓟ 97631@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Well I just played the online version of it and I find it to be a somewhat entertaining game plus it made me laugh lol. People get to worked up these days on violence and such. Yes perhaps it was a bad move on the maker&#39;s part to base it off a real person but it&#39;s obvious that was only done for PR purposes. This game probably would never have been heard of otherwise. So I&#39;m not saying the game is something little kids should play but it&#39;s still a nice little timewaster and I approve of it. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97598 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:18 +0000 roblou62 97598@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>To be honest I don&#39;t think it&#39;s that big of a deal. GGOTD did not MAKE this game they only put it out there, like so many other games for us to download or NOT. It is up to PARENTS to regulate their child/children&#39;s time spent on the internet. When did we as parents leave it up to game companies and others to monitor our children? Why would any of us leave such an important job in the hands of people we don&#39;t even know? This game is a game. I don&#39;t think anyone was thinking of decapitating Justin Bieber or anything. To some he is irritable. I bet even those who are his fans find this funny to a degree. But there is no way I would want the people at GGOTD or GAOTD to feel they have to monitor the software or games they put out here for us to use or not. It is enough for them to get this stuff for us. We need to monitor ourselves. If you didn&#39;t like this game, pass it by. Poor taste, good taste or no taste. I don&#39;t think this is really a huge problem. I wish the people at GAOTD to feel free to offer whatever. Not just cater to a certain audience. When that happens we all lose. Trust me we will. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97525 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:42:33 +0000 Buckleysmom 97525@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Yeh.....I agree with y&#39;all. This game is in poor taste and it was a bad decision on GGOTD&#39;s part to include it here. JB happens to be a good kid which makes it that much worse, but even if it were someone I dislike I would still feel the same....poor taste all the way. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97519 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:55:27 +0000 Inas 97519@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>This is also why I feel as I do, because game involves a real human being. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97514 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:46:33 +0000 mikiem2 97514@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>My own 2 cents, for whatever it&#39;s worth -- in this economy prob&#39;ly less than 0. :-)</p> <p><blockquote>...meet young people who are in prison because they seem to have no real sense of right or wrong...</p> <p>...and tell me if they honestly say they think such games would be helpful to the kind of youngsters who murdered James Bulger!</p> <p>I would like to hear comments from others on the subject.<br /> Lesley Wells </blockquote></p> <p>I&#39;m not sure how much effect a game can have on kids. Some of those you mentioned in prison may have been put on that path long before they could manage pretty much any video game, not by virtue of who they are but by where they lived. I grew up in an environment in the 60s where we went to school armed in 2nd/3rd grade [we&#39;d straighten large diaper safety pins into shivs carried hidden in our un-tucked shirt tails -- it&#39;s worse of course nowadays, but we couldn&#39;t get our hands on anything else back then]. If there was a fight, including the one-sided affairs, if someone wound up on the ground everyone watching would rush in kicking -- perhaps one reason gangs became so popular later on. It was less about having low expectations for the future &amp; more about not expecting a future. In that sort of situation games can&#39;t compete with real life. That said, since we can&#39;t make a wish &amp; change the world, trying to reach those you can should be applauded, Lesley. Thanks.</p> <p><blockquote>...today&#39;s game simply by the fact that it&#39;s including the name of a real live person changes the rules for me and I consider it in very bad taste...</blockquote></p> <p>I think you&#39;ve hit on the essence of it Whiterabbit. Thankfully not every kid suffers that sort of environ I had or worse. Whatever their life is like however I think we should remember that as adults we see more shades of grey than kids/teens/young adults that haven&#39;t fully matured psychologically -- though they&#39;re not hesitant to exploit that perspective to get their way, I think they realize it as just a ploy. Not letting your kids play BiberKicker &amp; then carrying on watching the soccer match can make you a hypocrit in their eyes [the difference you see they may not], used as excuse to forget everything else you&#39;d teach them. If as adults we try to set an example or send a message above all we need to be consistant in their eyes, not ours. IMHO everything about BiberKicker should be condemned like any other personal attack, because it is a personal attack -- condeming today&#39;s Game GOTD, &amp; then later ranting about the boss or some politician/political candidate unfurls that hypocrit banner in many a kid&#39;s perspective [I only wish more adults felt that way too]. If BiberKicker is wrong, I don&#39;t think you&#39;re going to convince a kid it&#39;s because you&#39;re *kicking* a cartoon head -- much worse happens to cartoon characters &amp; in the newspaper comics every day. It&#39;s wrong because that head represents an individual, by name, providing a way to attack them personally. If that&#39;s wrong, &amp; I believe it is, than so is every other personal attack, every attack based on whom a person is or what they think, rather than dissagreeing with whatever it is they do &amp;/or advocate &amp;/or the ideas they present. Granted it&#39;s much easier to attack an individual [which is probably why personal attacks are so popular, particularly in the media], but then I&#39;ve never heard of anyone actually trying to teach anyone to be lazy. </p> <p>In a side note, I can well imagine the GOTD &amp; Wheemplay crews being a little perplexed -- we read &amp; watch &amp; many often take part in personal attacks on political, governmental, banking, corporate leaders etc. all day long, 7 days a week, yet this cartoonish game gets the heat. If I&#39;m right, I hope too many don&#39;t hold it against either if they in fact they just misunderstood popular western politics/culture... it&#39;s popularly acceptable to personally attack those people whom it is popular to dislike, though you have to be careful, e.g. only attacking the left when you&#39;re among the right &amp; vice versa, or you could find yourself in big trouble. Unfortunately the only people I can imagine really disliking Justin Bieber at that level are the fathers of Bieber enraptured daughters. :-) </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97513 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:56:38 +0000 Inas 97513@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Good for you, WR, way to go - kudos on your conscientious actions.</p> <p>Inas </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97512 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:07:30 +0000 Whiterabbit-uk 97512@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I was shocked when I saw the title of this game and moreso when I saw the giveaway description the other day. After checking it out via a couple of flash sites I decided that I wasn&#39;t going to write my usual review for the game giveawayoftheday because I though the game very inappropriate for the game giveaway project. </p> <p>For me it&#39;s not the violent nature of the game that I have a problem with as I would be a hypocrite if I said that was so because I play a lot of violent games like ArmA II a very real military simulator and others like Call of Duty that glorify war and killing, but to me that&#39;s all fantasy and isn&#39;t based on any real person, today&#39;s game simply by the fact that it&#39;s including the name of a real live person changes the rules for me and I consider it in very bad taste and may have lost the giveaway project some of its patrons. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97507 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:41:52 +0000 Robert 97507@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I agree to the point that it&#39;s not the kinda game you&#39;d expect on giveawayoftheday.<br /> Not approving the game in any way,but then again nowadays youngsters are used to much more violent games than this one(and opinions vary whether or not these games influence someone&#39;s behavior)</p> <p>So imho we should not put things out of perspective.<br /> Teenage idols are worshiped by some but trashed by a lot of others.So this silly game allows some to vent their disapproval in a virtual way.<br /> And I bet the game got a lot of attention by the non-Bibier enthusiasts. :)</p> <p>Personally I don&#39;t care much for any of these violent games...in fact I disapprove of them,but I guess in today&#39;s world this comes down to fighting windmills .</p> <p>But I do like today&#39;s screensaver ,a masterpiece to get some piece and quiet,even if I&#39;m generally not into useless CPU consuming &#39;savers&#39;. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97504 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:52:08 +0000 Inas 97504@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Good for you, Graylox, kudos to you for your conscientiousness :)<br /> Inas </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97502 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:10:48 +0000 graylox 97502@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Just one word: Disgusting!</p> <p>I raised my concerns in a PM to the Project Team.</p> <p>graylox </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97498 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:37:45 +0000 Inas 97498@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi Lesley, yes today&#39;s game is in extremely poor taste.</p> <p>I expect GOTD exec team not to promote such games that encourage violence, especially violence against real human beings, such as Justin Bieber, etc., as children are impressionable, and even some adults (sadly) are also impressionable.</p> <p>For this reason, alone, I immediately decided against downloading today&#39;s game.</p> <p>Kudos to you for getting in touch with GOTD exec team to voice your concerns. :)<br /> Inas </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10879#post-97497 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:36:25 +0000 Froogle 97497@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I teach IT in the prison services and daily meet young people who are in prison because they seem to have no real sense of right or wrong.</p> <p>I have written to Give Away of the Day and asked them to read their own description of this weekend&#39;s game:</p> <p>&quot;Kick Justin Bieber in the face and into the trash can! Beat him up as you toss his head around like a soccer ball &amp; solve funny physics-based puzzles. The more you kicker Justin Bieber, the bloodier he gets!&quot;</p> <p>and tell me if they honestly say they think such games would be helpful to the kind of youngsters who murdered James Bulger!</p> <p>I would like to hear comments from others on the subject.<br /> Lesley Wells </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72316 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:20:42 +0000 wizzard_of_ozz2004 72316@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I for one am not concerned at all with the poor comment ratings. The whole rating system for comments is a joke that is merely a show of popularity and the public following trends. I also am not bothered by the high star ratings. As Bubby said, it only takes a few to swing the stars in one direction or the other.</p> <p>KAS, you really need to make sure you have your facts straight before you come in with guns blazing. Do you have any proof? At this point it is all speculation. We can speculate as much as we want, but we may never have any proof that there is anything malevolent going on. I&#39;m more inclined to go along with TK_M and agree that this is a case of some recurring person as opposed to developers. And lastly, you really need to check your conspiracy theories at the door. Bubby is the only mod/admin that has access to both the forums and GOTD. Whiterabbit is the only other person who has any access and his is to the Games side. I&#39;m not sure about the others, but I&#39;m offended on all of our behalves that you would insinuate that we have malicious moderators here in the forums. Next time please take the time to get your facts in order before you start making accusations. </p> <p>From here on out, any more references to &quot;the GOTD conspiracy&quot; can be found on the original post.</p> <p><a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6932" rel="nofollow">http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6932</a> </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72315 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:23:59 +0000 TK_M 72315@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hasn&#39;t anyone else noted that this last week or so, the star ratings for postings are just ridiculous? For example, Ashraf having MINUS 139 ratings for his posting at the stage when I looked?</p> <p>Clearly saomeone has written a script and is now making automated submissions based on their own predjudices.</p> <p>It might even have been going on for a lot longer than that, although in a more minor form? I stopped posting myself after some suspiciously low ratings for my posts a few months ago - I thought that the ratings were real for my posts at the time and so stopped posting since they did not appear to be wanted. Now Ashraf&#39;s postings are always pretty good, so when he started getting worse and worse ratings, that was when I started to doubt the ratings though.</p> <p>This should be about the quality of the posting, not a popularity contest, or worse still, some sort of pro- and anti- battleground as seems to be happening today, with quite unbelieveable plus and minus scores during the day as one side or another seems to attack the site. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72313 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:09:00 +0000 Inas 72313@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi Kas, I agree with you - something definitely looks fishy about the negative votes for people who posted comments for today&#39;s giveaway - that said, though, my comments were positive about today&#39;s software program, but I still received negative votes - so there seems to be no rhyme or reason for this &quot;mad voting&quot; as you put it.</p> <p>Anyway, as I&#39;ve said many times before, it would be in GOTD&#39;s best interests (for the sake of accountability and integrity of the voting system) if the GOTD team would implement a voting process that (hopefully) would prevent such flagrant voting manipulation from happening again in the future. Otherwise, why even include a voting system that is nothing but a &quot;silly joke?&quot; This makes no sense at all.</p> <p>If GOTD staff/execs genuinely care about such matters, they will take positive action to solve this problem to the best of their ability, though it may not be 100% foolproof - but if GOTD staff/execs do not care about this matter, then I guess we will have no choice but to put up with such ongoing shenanigans in the future.</p> <p>Of course, I&#39;m sure that our good, esteemed friend (Bubby) will not agree with (or like) what we say - but therein lies the beauty of a free forum, in that we can all agree to respect one another&#39;s different opinions without convincing one another that we are wrong or right. That&#39;s my humble opinion, and I&#39;m sticking with it.</p> <p>Cheers,<br /> Happy </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72310 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:45:06 +0000 KAS 72310@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>We had this same problem the previous time they had a giveaway, and lots of prople commented on the votes being completely mad. Ashraf used to get high scores on his reviews back then. He gave their product a fairly critical review and had -30 five minutes after he had posted it. Then his votes started to go up again, many hours later, and after lots of people commented that the voting was rigged, and he ended up on +40 something. Recently his reviews have received very bad votes, but today he got huge + votes because he gave their product a good score. Everyone else got at least -100.</p> <p>Look at the votes in the non-English pages. They still use the old voting system. Today&#39;s program has got only 22% thumb up and 78 % thumb down. In the English pages they got 5 stars in all categories. Noone else gets 5* in all categories. How do you explain that compared to just 22% positive votes in the other voting system. Someone tampered the new voting system. Wake up guys.</p> <p>I posted several comments, but they have all been removed by the moderator. That has never happened before. I posted critical remarks before also, but today they all disappeared.</p> <p>GOTD use a group of people as moderators for this forum. Several of them are close friends, or very active users in the forum. The only way all this censorship and vote tampering can take place is if one of those are very close to Simpo Tech., or if GOTD has been hacked. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72295 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:19:37 +0000 BuBBy 72295@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>The vendor doesn&#39;t have the ability to moderate or censor user comments.</p> <p>As for the fact that you claim they are tampering with the votes - at the moment there are approx 35 votes in each category. With such a small voting pool - of course any amount of voting can swing the average scores. It would be a lot harder to affect the averages if 5,000 people had voted.</p> <p>For what it is worth (the voting) I think there are a few people running around with tinfoil hats on yelling what a huge difference 4 or 5 stars will really make.</p> <p>If you had developed a new software package - and wanted to release some statistics on what percentage of people found your software easy to use, to have a statistically valid sample of the user population - you would probably need to survey more than 30 or 40 people.</p> <p>I&#39;ll pass on the concerns, but even if someone did manage to get 10 of the friends to vote 5 stars for the giveaway, I really don&#39;t think they could consider that they have just succeeded in the crime of the decade. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72292 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:34:26 +0000 notblocklox 72292@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi, KAS!<br /> Where did you see that it is Simpo Technologies who manipulates the ratings?<br /> And even worse, how do you know that they are permitted to censor comments?</p> <p><strong>Please don&#39;t make such statements without any evidence.</strong></p> <p>That the ratings are rather suspicious sometimes is easy to see. But who does it?<br /> When the ratings for the software are too good in your opinion, and you think that it can only be the developer who made that, who is giving the comment of the GOTD team the bad rating? The GOTD team themselves? Where is the logic in your accusation?<br /> There is another thread to this subject, please read especially what BuBBy has to say about it:<br /> <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6932" rel="nofollow">http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6932</a></p> <p>graylox </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7010#post-72290 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:04:49 +0000 KAS 72290@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>It&#39;s a scandal that Simpo Technologies are allowed to temper with the votes for their products every time they&#39;re given away here. The same happened at the giveaway of their PDF Creator 2, on Nov 27th 2009: <a href="&quot;&quot;//www.giveawayoftheday.com/simpo-pdf-creator-2-0/&quot;&quot;&quot;">Simpo PDF Creator 2.0</a></p> <p>Today they&#39;re even permitted to do censoring of the comments. Only 2 comments have been posted the last 3 and a half hour. They are made by the moderator, not by visitors. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-71913 Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:22:50 +0000 Whiterabbit-uk 71913@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi Packett, the giveaway team do test each software to make sur eit runs and also pu each program through a through portfolio of malware testing to make sure the programs are safe to post.</p> <p>To Serenity, there appears to be no rhyme or reason for various comments being deleted. I&#39;ve had lots of comments disappear from the giveaway side of the project. and even some from the game giveaway side despite me being the main moderator for that side of the project. Though I iknow why my posts from the games side have been deleted - usually because i have several hyperlinks attached to the post. I can assure you all comments from the game giveaway side will be posted unless they break any posting rules or as I mention above have several hypelinks (though only one can also cause the posts to be filtered off to the spam bin automatically), and even then they may just be edited. sually delete any innappropriate comments but will post a reply letting the offender know why their post has been deleted. all the moderators are volunteers not paid employees of the giveaway project. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-71910 Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:27:23 +0000 Serenity 71910@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Seriously though, my last comment for Online Armor ++ (Anti-Virus and Firewall Protection) was also deleted. It was a Very positive comment. I guess my support is not needed.</p> <p>I will stop commenting in future.</p> <p>*walks out sobbing* </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-71787 Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:45:08 +0000 Whiterabbit-uk 71787@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>If you&#39;ve posted any links the comment may go straight to the spam bin. Otherwise I can&#39;t see any reason why your comment isn&#39;t getting through. </p> <p>Assuming the moderation console for the giveaway project is the same as for the game giveaway, there is always an indicator telling themoderator/admin that there are comments to be approved. so either you comment isn&#39;t getting through poperly 9though i appreciate you saying that you&#39;re getting a message saying duplicate comment, so it must be getting to the site), or a moderator is not approving your comment for some reason. I can only guess at this though because I only have access to the game console.</p> <p>W.R. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-71785 Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:08:26 +0000 Serenity 71785@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Finally I found a thread by GAOTD members complaining about deleted comments. First of all.. gmon, recommend me the shrink you&#39;re going to.</p> <p>I have posted a few positive comments and a few questions related to the software offered, but all of them seemed to disappear. Are there any keywords that are not allowed in the &#39;comment&#39; section? Just curious.</p> <p>Thanks </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-70168 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:40:42 +0000 watcher13 70168@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Just as an illustration of what I said, just tried to post a late comment on today&#39;s software, Inpaint. Got 2 &quot;Bad Gateway&#39;s&quot; (am using Firefox) and then the notice of duplicate comment. So it apparently went at least partially through when I got one of the bad gateway notices. Whether it will every get posted, only time will tell. That kind of thing convinces me these are often technical glitches. (I&#39;m just saying this stuff for general purposes for everybody, Bigun. Most of it hasn&#39;t been directed at you, so I hope you won&#39;t think I&#39;m harping at you.) </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345/page/2#post-70159 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:37:55 +0000 watcher13 70159@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I appreciate that, Bigun, but let me clarify because I don&#39;t want to mislead you. It&#39;s been the consensus opinion here that the Bad Gateway message was caused by server congestion on GOTD&#39;s end. However, if you&#39;re only getting it when you use IE, you might be on to something. That may be a valuable clue, though that&#39;s the first I remember hearing that. Not to beat a dead horse too much, but, again, GOTD has stayed quiet on this problem.</p> <p>I, of course, was referring to the original topic of the thread, comments not being posted on the comments page. In that case, my suspicion that it&#39;s technical on their end was based on a number of factors. 1. It occurred to some of the biggest backers of the project, like Whiterabbit, who even, I believe, had trouble accessing the new page at one time. 2. Most insisted that their comments were not critical. Many even said they were positive. 3. A very sharp decrease in the number of comments and often very few in the first 2 or 3 hours of the giveaway, when the posting&#39;s usually the heaviest. That couldn&#39;t possibly look good to developers and it&#39;s steadily been going up, which hints to me that GOTD is working on it. 4. Reports of occasional problems even before the redesign, which I suspect were attributable to the spam filter, which is actually not static but a &quot;live&quot; detection service provided by bbPress. </p> <p>Of course, it all may be attributable to Bubby&#39;s recent suspicion that a moderator was throwing away a lot of comments because they just couldn&#39;t be bothered to take the time to read them. I suspect that&#39;s been fixed, but there&#39;s been so many reports since the redesign that I&#39;m still convinced it&#39;s a number of factors and many of them are technical.</p> <p>Mainly, though, as you and so many have said, there has always been ton of crap that snuck through - Bubby once joked that you could post &quot;banana, banana, banana&quot; and it would get through - that there just didn&#39;t seem to be any pattern that would point toward censorship. I know you didn&#39;t say that, either. I&#39;m just saying that the evidence to me points to just another example that GOTD is working on it, but is afraid to admit they&#39;re having a problem. Just like with the &quot;unfixable&quot; email notification problem that, nevertheless, got fixed.</p> <p>Anyway, I&#39;m glad you had some success with downloading. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345#post-70156 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:04:27 +0000 Bigun 70156@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>I appreciate the comments. I my situation may very well be a browser issue. I noticed a large number of comments today concerning a &quot;bad gateway&quot; error. I got the same error when I tried to download today&#39;s offer. I tried to download several times using Internet Explorer 7 and I consistently got the 502 bad gateway error. When I switched to Firefox 3 I was able to download today&#39;s offer, Inpaint, without any error message or problem. </p> <p> &quot;Happy Person&quot;, I believe about a month ago you were having similar problems and WhiteRabbit posted your reviews for you. If you found the problem was a browser issue, I will to agree that I am having technical problems as well. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345#post-70134 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:52:42 +0000 watcher13 70134@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi Bigun, I was semi-out of touch or I would have responded earlier. I hope it&#39;s working better for you now.</p> <p>First, please remember there are different moderators for the forums than there are for the comments page. With one exception, all the moderators on the comments page (not counting the games page, which is all Whiterabbit) are GOTD staff. The opposite here is true. With, I believe one exception, all the moderators on the forums are volunteers. Really, the two aren&#39;t related. It&#39;s apples and oranges. I say this because, we&#39;ve found you can&#39;t assume that GOTD will react to anything in these forums. We think they read at least some of the forum threads, but we&#39;ve had very little evidence of this, because GOTD prefers to play &quot;that man behind the curtain&quot; and keep most of what they do a closely guarded secret. Unfortunate, but I believe true.</p> <p>I posted to say that I believe GOTD is working on the comments page. Of course, they won&#39;t admit to it. LOL. As I said in another post, I believe the litmus test was the TINY number of comments that got through for a short amount of time. Less than 20 in more than one instance. That&#39;s just not normal. That strikes me a as a technical problem. The software on those days couldn&#39;t be THAT bad. I&#39;m not sure some of it wasn&#39;t better than average. We&#39;ve certainly had worse. I believe the more message getting through now indicate that they&#39;re working on it. And some of the comments getting through contain negatives. Also, Bubby pointed out some questionable moderating practices - not related to censorship, but just plain laziness - and that might be what they&#39;ve corrected. Or maybe both that and what I&#39;m convinced are glitches. I&#39;d say, &quot;hang in there&quot;. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345#post-69975 Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:50:26 +0000 Inas 69975@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Hi Bigun and others, hope you are all doing well. First of all, I wish everyone (and your families) a very happy, healthy new year.</p> <p>Second, with respect to comments not being posted - I know that when I try to post comments via AOL, it does not work sometimes, and also, the &quot;awaiting moderation&quot; queue message does not show up at all, so I&#39;m not sure whether my comment went through successfully (and it&#39;s just a problem with the message) or whether my comments did not go through at all.</p> <p>You may want to try Firefox, which is what I use now, and it works like a charm. Not only do my comments go through successfully, but I also see the &quot;awaiting moderation&quot; message every time.</p> <p>That said, if it&#39;s not a web brower issue - you may want to contact the GOTD admin staff directly, via the online &quot;contact form.&quot; I did this back when I was having problems with my comments, and the GOTD admin staff were very nice and helpful. Maybe they can give you some helpful suggestions. It&#39;s just a thought.</p> <p>In summary - wishing everyone a very happy, healthy, safe, successful new year, and may peace reign supreme (all over the world) in 2010.</p> <p>Best,<br /> Inas </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6345#post-69948 Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:42:32 +0000 Bigun 69948@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>A month gone by - no comment or other action taken by GOTD moderators on this string.</p> <p>I too am disappointed when I spend time to use and evaluate a program, conduct outside research when third-party information could be helpful to understanding my comment, and then write a comment - only to never see it posted on the comments page. I have tried very hard to post a comment only when I believe that the comment help others in their evaluation of the daily giveaway or as an answer to those having specific problems with the giveaway program. If 3 or 4 have already posted answers to a problem, I see no reason to add my answer to the pile. So I do not do that. </p> <p>I am sure that I had never bashed a person and have been as charitable as possible in my evaluation of the given download. When I read through the comments on the GOTD product offering page, I see on a daily basis multiple rule infractions, comments filled with mudslinging and bashing an individual or an individual&#39;s idea, totally off-topic remarks, etc. unmoderated comments containing some or simultaneously all the above infractions. My comment, which usually has taken the considerable time to write, gets bumped time and time again. As a veteran bumpie I have been charitable in my words, even if not in my thoughts, to the bumper because my comments usually are made late in the day. Late in the day day comments may be presented to a tired and worn-out moderator so I have given the bumper polite latitude in his actions for cutting my comment. I have done so because I felt that the bumper is probably too exhausted to moderate any more comments. And then, I see a half-dozen more comments posted after the time that I submitted my own comment.</p> <p>I believe that the people that have previously posted comments on this topic would only posts constructive comments. I believe the same individuals make up the core supporters for the English GOTD program. Why disappoint and insult this group? Also, why not have the person or persons responsible for deleting posts leave a reason for their actions. Then we would know that our dumped comments were the result of a deliberate action and that they did not just fall through the cracks.</p> <p>Intermittent reinforcement develops the behavior that is the most difficult of all conditioned responses to extinguish. That is what I have been given - intermittent reinforcement. So I will probably try a comment once again on another day. </p>